Songs For A New World

How amazing is the music to this show? Jason Robert Brown is some composer. Some of the songs are so beautiful. "I'm Not Afraid Of Anything", "I'd Give It All For you", The Opening...The cast on the album is amazing.

In the past few months JRB had really emerged as one of my favorite composers. I became OBSSESSED (I can never remember how many 's' in that word!) with The Last 5 Years around June and then I actually just saw SFNW in LA last weekend. The room was one big coffee shop that all the audience sat in and the 4 performers were among the rest of us the whole time. I knew most of the songs, but in seeing the music performed live by 3 very competant performers (Woman 2 was painfully bad) I've come to love it even more. It's a wonderful collection of songs and gave JRB his start. He's only 33 and I cannot wait to see what else he blesses the musical theater community with in the rest of his career!
P.S.- Does anyone think "She Cries" could have been taken STRAIGHT from The Last 5 Years as one of Jamie's songs?!

Oh Hell yes, Songstress. "She Cries" sounds just like a song Jamie would sing. The singer also reminds me of Norbert Neo Butz. And as much I like this composer, does anyone else feel that a lot of his songs sound the same? I mean, I guess it's like that for a lot of composers, but a lot of JRB's songs in SFANW remind me of stuff in "The Last Five Years". Nonetheless, though, the songs are beautiful and each tell stories in themselves.

I too enjoy the music from this show. I saw a production in Philadelphia recently where everyone was quite good in it.. however, they used 4 girls and 2 guys, and added a "plot" and dialogue.
The director seemed to be doing something different with it, but my opinion is, if it ain't broke....

She Cries could be taken straight fromt he last five years. I was told once that the version of SFNW isnt what it began as. Supposedly JRB said that he began with a ton of trunk songs and threw them together then, he ended up rewriting the whole show...making me wonder where the trunk songs went...with l5y a possibility. ALSO How can you call Parade traditional??? I don't see it at all. Musically structured Parade is the most untraditional of his works.

STEVOS

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